


Big Apple Steve and That Time He Obliviously Third-Wheeled His Friends All Summer

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment
Genre: M/M, Oblivious Third Wheeling, Obscure But Totally Legitimate Fraternity Traditions, Passing References to Religion, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Steven Lim is not a stupid man. Steven Lim is a capable man, an ex-scientist, creator and producer of Buzzfeed’s most popular video series. He helped invent Tide Pods, for Pete’s sake.Tide Pods.So he knows he’s no idiot. He’s naïve, perhaps. He has blind spots, like anyone, particularly when it comes to relationships,especiallywhen it comes to sex.Still, when he walks in on Ryan sitting astride Shane’s lap on the sofa, tongue fully in the guy’s mouth, handfullydown his pants, Steven reckons he should probably have seen this one coming.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 104
Kudos: 913





	Big Apple Steve and That Time He Obliviously Third-Wheeled His Friends All Summer

**Author's Note:**

> So from the moment I watched [the first Watcher Weekly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkDRruNanFA&t=1351s) I haven't been able to stop thinking about how crazy it must've been for Steven Lim to just waltz right into the middle of all that weird-ass energy. 
> 
> Also, fine, yes, I've always wanted an excuse to write my own version of that scene from Friends where Chandler has to kiss everyone to keep his relationship with Monica on the DL.
> 
> As a heads up, if you are sensitive to secondhand embarrassment or simply do not enjoy reading from the POV of someone who's out of the loop, this might not be the fic for you!!

*

Steven Lim is not a stupid man. Steven Lim is a capable man, an ex-scientist, creator and producer of Buzzfeed’s most popular video series. He helped invent Tide Pods, for Pete’s sake. _Tide Pods_. And then he had the guts to walk away from his budding laundry detergent empire at the tender age of twenty-three when he realized it would never make him happy—just very, very clean.

So he knows he’s no idiot. He’s naïve, perhaps. He has blind spots, like anyone, particularly when it comes to relationships, _especially_ when it comes to sex.

Still, when he walks in on Ryan sitting astride Shane’s lap on the sofa, tongue fully in the guy’s mouth, hand _fully_ down his pants, Steven reckons he should probably have seen this one coming.

“Oh,” he says as Ryan tumbles over with a surprised squeak, a hand over his shirtless chest like he’s worried about modesty despite it being far, far too late for that. “Huh.”

*

Moving to L.A. had been a culture shock, when Steven had arrived back in 2015 as a fellow at Buzzfeed. He’s grown to love the city in the intervening years, come to crave its food and adore the diversity of its people, but there’s no denying it was a far cry from his sheltered childhood.

When he moved here he’d never lived more than two hours away from his parents, and it showed.

Finding the balance was tricky at first. Steven remembers how hard it was, in the beginning, to stay true to himself even as he desperately craved to fit in. He remembers the pressure to drink, to party, to skip church for brunches out with friends or coworkers.

He remembers how hard it was to say no, and how more often than not he felt left out rather than righteous when he stuck to his guns.

It was never the culture of Buzzfeed he had a problem with. Steven feels kinship with all manner of people, and when the Bible says _love thy neighbor as thyself_, he knows it means _all_ his neighbors. No, the problem was always that Steven had the undeniable sense that the culture of Buzzfeed had a problem with _him_; that his coworkers assumed that because he was religious he was judging them and finding them wanting.

Steven vividly remembers a trip to Vegas for a video, early in his Buzzfeed career—sitting with Keith and Shane and Keith’s friend in a car, trying to joke with them and feeling like an unlikeable try-hard when the jokes didn’t land. Feeling _left behind_. The awkwardness of having to tell them he wouldn’t be going out with them, that he’d be calling it an early night in the hotel while they got up to all kinds of mischief, had been crushing.

“It’ll be funny,” he’d told them. “I’ll get some footage of me puttering around the hotel room, wearing a fuzzy robe and ordering room service and stuff, and we’ll splice it in between shots of you guys going wild. We’ll make it a bit.”

“Yeah, sure, man,” Keith had said to him, and turned back to his friend without another thought to Steven, and Steven had felt _dismissed_. Written off as unsalvageable, un-fun, and not worth his time. Shane hadn’t piled on, exactly, but he hadn’t spoken up in Steven’s defense either, and nobody had said a word to him the rest of the way to Vegas.

It wasn’t like anybody was icing him out on purpose. It was more like they just didn’t see the _point_ of him.

If it hadn’t been for Ryan, Steven might not have stuck it out at Buzzfeed at all. But even though Ryan was himself not religious, he got Steven instinctively in a way others did not. Like Steven he’d grown up straddling multiple worlds, doing his very best to feel at home in all of them and succeeding to varying degrees, battling upriver against some fundamental sense of his own uncoolness. He’d gone to a private religiously-affiliated college for the strong film program it provided, so he was less shocked than some by Steven’s faith or his fairly strict personal moral compass.

Temperamentally they couldn’t have been more different. Ryan was a bro, a frat guy, a heavy partier, as over-reliant on self-defensive sarcasm as Steven was painfully earnest, but it didn’t matter. He’d joked easily with Steven, joined pick-up basketball games with him, and Steven had felt like maybe there could be a place for him here after all, and people who would call him a friend. 

In the end he’d stuck it out, and then Worth It had come around and changed everything.

So when Ryan calls to ask him, on Christmas Eve 2018, whether Steven would ever consider leaving Buzzfeed to start his own company—whether Steven would be interested in starting a company with Ryan and Shane, where they could make whatever content they want without the constraints of their less-than-benevolent corporate overlord—Steven doesn’t even have to think about it.

“Of course,” he tells Ryan, awash with the sort of spiritual certainty that can only come from making a life-altering decision on the eve of one of the holiest days of the year. “Count me in.”

“Uh,” Ryan says. “We’ve got documents to show you. A prospectus and stuff. I made charts?”

“Okay,” Steven says, full to bursting with trust and excitement. He doesn’t need to see the charts, which honestly are probably not great anyway. “Cool. My answer’s yes.”

“They’re really good charts. They took me, like, a whole day.”

Ryan’s obviously taken aback by Steven’s lack of interest in the details, by the ease in which he jumped in with both feet first. Ryan himself has never met a decision he couldn’t worry to death, tracing the path of every outcome back to certain catastrophe in his head until every choice seems like the wrong one.

“Well, send them to me, then. But it’s still going to be a yes.”

Steven bets he could have done those charts in an hour or two, which is almost certainly why Ryan wants him on board in the first place. He figures it would be rude to point this out, though, and he doesn’t want to be hurtful.

“Okay,” Ryan says, still brought up short. “It’s just—you’d need to move back to L.A. And I know you love New York, so that’s a tall ask. You should take some time to think about it.”

Yes, Steven loves New York City—the proper winters, the glorious buzzing energy of it, the public transit—but he knows a golden opportunity when he hears it.

“I already thought about it,” he says. “For, like, a full minute.”

There’s a pause. “Hey, Steve?”

Steven’s long since given up trying to break Ryan of the nicknames. He knows now that it’s how Ryan communicates affection and care, because like about ninety percent of men he’s terrified of emotional intimacy.

“Hm?”

“What’s it like to be, like, _intolerably_ sure of everything all the time? Doesn’t it get old knowing people want to punch you in your serene face?”

It’s flattering that Ryan sees him that way. Steven doesn’t have a hotline to God or anything. He’s simply developed a gift for listening to his own instincts, and for putting his trust in the hands of people who have proven themselves worthy of it.

Charts are nice, data is great, but what could those things tell Steven about Ryan that he doesn’t already know?

“It never gets old,” Steven tells Ryan. “Feels great. Punch away. Seriously, send me your charts, and let’s sit down when I’m back in L.A. on the fifth and talk shop.”

“Uh,” Ryan says again. Clearly he thought this would be much harder, and now he’s at sixes and sevens trying to regroup. “Cool. Okay. I’ll talk to Shane and we’ll set it up. We’ve turned my kitchen into our war room, hope that’s okay.”

“Sounds great,” Steven reassures him, trying to keep his voice modulated and calm. Sometimes talking to Ryan’s a little like befriending a horse that’s prone to spooking. It’s all about low, soothing tones and gaining trust through offerings of food.

“Okay,” Ryan repeats. “Okay. Wow. I can’t believe this is—wow. We’re doing this, huh?”

It’s not an exaggeration for Steven to say that he feels genuinely blessed by the weird, winding path his life has taken. 

*

After all these years, Steven still hasn’t made up his mind about Shane. The guy’s nice enough but he’s a closed book, and he and Steven have never found anything to connect about.

Or maybe they _have_ found the thing, and it’s Ryan. Maybe that one degree of separation is enough for a good working relationship. Ryan wouldn’t be asking Steven to join them if he didn’t think it would work.

After he hangs up with Ryan, Steven searches his phone contacts. He doesn’t even have Shane’s cell number. He shoots off an Instagram DM with his own cell and a couple of hours later he gets a text from an unknown number: the thumbs up emoji, an apple emoji. And then, immediately after that, a very close up photo of what he presumes to be Shane’s eyeball.

“Weird,” Steven mutters. “Weird guy.” He adds the number to his contacts.

It’s not news to Steven that Ryan and Shane have developed, over the course of several years working closely together, a very specific shared communication style. Ryan has a tendency to pick up the linguistic tics and style cues of the people he’s around. Some might mistake it for a character flaw, spinelessness or a suggestibility of spirit, but Steven recognizes it for the adept code-switching it is. 

Still, even though he knows it, he’s surprised at how different all that manic energy feels at close range, how overwhelming it is to be caught inside it.

Steven’s perched on a stool at Ryan’s kitchen island, listening to Ryan chatter about some of the content they’ve been brainstorming. He’s leaning over Steven’s shoulder, pointing emphatically at the documents strewn out around them to make his points. Shane’s chiming in here and there, but he’s also moving easily around Ryan’s kitchen, pouring mugs of tea for all of them.

Steven wonders how many evenings they’ve spent in this kitchen over the last couple of months, making tea and plans and more tea. Or maybe before Steven came it was beer, and they’re being polite.

“So the idea is that we’ll go to a city together, right, and I’ll pick a popular tourist attraction and Shane will pick a hidden gem and then we’ll fight about which is better!”

“Because this guy’s a little mainstream but I’m, you know, niche,” Shane says.

“Because you’re a freak who likes freak things,” Ryan contends.

“Unoriginal trash.”

“Hipster scum.”

Steven watches them, back and forth, like a tennis match between masters. He hadn’t anticipated how tough their rhythm would be to keep up with, hadn’t realized that they are in fact the Venus and Serena Williams of playful trash-talking.

It doesn’t make him doubt his decision to team up with them, but it is sociologically and anthropologically interesting. He feels like Jane Goodall among the chimpanzees, observing something he only barely understands.

“That sounds like a good one. Any other stuff already in the works?”

“There’s this one called Puppet History,” Ryan starts, and then he shoots Shane a little grin, his eyes bright. Steven almost feels like he isn’t meant to see it. “It’s going to be terrible.”

Steven translates this to mean _amazing_.

“Basically Shane will tell me all these history stories—”

“But with puppets.”

“Right, with puppets, and then I’ll call him an idiot and make fun of his singing—”

“Because there will be musical numbers.”

“And then we’ll _fight about it_!” Ryan says jubilantly.

“That sounds great,” Steven says, sensing the emergence of a pattern. “Anything else?”

“We thought about one where we’d rank stuff,” Shane says. He’s whirring around Ryan’s kitchen again as if on autopilot, more comfortable than Steven is in his own kitchen, fetching a paper towel for a bit of spilled tea and a jar of honey in case Steven wants it.

Steven feels like he is missing something, but he can’t put his finger on it.

“Movies and shows,” Ryan cuts in. “Or even dumb everyday shit like, I don’t know, kitchen utensils. And then we’d compare our rankings and—”

“Fight about it,” Shane finishes for him.

Steven pinches his top lip between two fingers, trying to use the pressure point there to fend off the headache he can feel starting behind his left eye.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you guys have any ideas that _don’t_ revolve around you fighting about something?”

Ryan and Shane look at each other, as if they are only just now seeing the pattern as Steven is pointing it out.

“No,” Ryan says after a moment. Shane shakes his head.

“Maybe we focus our efforts there, then. As a point of growth.”

“Maybe.” Ryan sounds skeptical.

“Or—well, or else I don’t know where I fit in, to be honest,” Steven says, trying not to sound disappointed. It’s just that it feels a little like being ignored on a five-hour car ride to Vegas all over again. He’s not sure where he sees himself in this.

To his surprise it’s Shane who understands what he’s trying to say without coming out and saying it. Shane must have been paying closer attention to Steven than he thought, must have recognized the old fear—to be left out, left behind, superfluous. 

“Well, I do think you’d be a really interesting addition to some of our shows,” Shane says. “Don’t sell yourself short. But also we were hoping you’d want to design a couple shows of your own. We can feature in them or you can bring other people on, whatever you want.”

“Complete creative freedom,” Ryan stresses, doing jazz hands.

“We asked you to be a part of this _because_ you bring a different perspective, not in spite of it.” Shane’s voice is soft, unburdened by sarcasm, delivering earnest sincerity the moment he realizes it’s what Steven needs. “You’re not just an afterthought we’re tacking on because we need somebody to manage the money.”

It’s easy to forget that Shane is older than him and Ryan by nearly five years, since they do the same jobs, but in times like this it shows.

“Although we really do need someone to manage the money,” Ryan blunders in, getting a pinch to the arm from Shane for his trouble. “Ow! I’m just saying! Our spreadsheets are a fucking mess.”

“Sorry,” Shane says, not looking remotely sorry. “But I need Steven to understand that we value his unique contributions and energy, and you’re being glib.”

Shane passes his thumb over Ryan’s bare forearm, taking care to soothe the spot where he pinched, rubbing the redness away. Ryan chokes on a sip of tea, leaning over into a full-blown coughing fit.

Steven assumes it’s just an allergic reaction to emotional vulnerability. 

“I tried to teach you pivot tables like two years ago, Ryan, but you wouldn’t listen,” Steven says, meeting Ryan in a joking place to calm him down again. Shane’s hand lands on Ryan’s back, patting him through it.

Steven’s confident, then, that they’ll make a good team.

*

They plan to pull a slow fade from Buzzfeed.

Ryan actually left before he even called Steven with his offer, so he’s working nearly full time on Watcher in between episodes of the season of Unsolved True Crime they’re filming.

Steven’s planning to leave at the end of March, and Shane’s contract is up at the end of May. They’ll officially incorporate then, with the hopes of being in a proper office space by fall.

Or at least that’s the plan. But then something happens that seems like it might throw a wrench in things, and Steven doesn’t know how to solve the problem because he’s not even sure what the problem is.

Ryan and Shane head to New Mexico one weekend in early March to film a one-off Supernatural episode of Unsolved for Warner Brothers, some sponsorship they secured before any of this happened. Steven doesn’t pay much attention to the specifics. He only knows that the Thursday before they leave there’s a team meeting and everything’s normal, and when they reconvene the following Tuesday it’s—very much _not_.

Steven gets to Ryan’s house a few minutes late, and he’s surprised to find that Shane isn’t already there. Usually Shane’s already working on dinner when Steven turns up, hustling Ryan away from the pots on the stove and saying he can’t be trusted not to burn his own kitchen down.

This time, when Steven lets himself in Ryan is sitting alone at his kitchen table, nursing a beer and staring off into space. He looks a little worse for the wear, like maybe he didn’t shower today. Maybe not the day before, either.

“Hey,” Steven says cautiously. “Am I early? Where’s Shane?”

Ryan looks over at him at the name. The skin under his eyes is blue and thin, the bags more pronounced than usual. 

“He’ll be here,” Ryan says, and then he shrugs, like it’s nothing to him. “Or he won’t.”

“Are you sick? We can push this if you’re not feeling well.”

Ryan laughs then, a harsh, unpleasantly ragged noise. Steven feels it up his spine, wincing at the wordless drag of misery.

“I’m not sick.”

He shoves back from the kitchen table with a hard scrape on the floor, turning his back on Steven to rinse out his bottle and toss it in the recycling.

“I—is something wrong with Shane, then? Did you guys…have a fight, or something?”

When Ryan turns back around, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, defensive. “We didn’t have a fight, Steven. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

A funny thing about being told not to worry about something, Steven finds, is that it makes him worry all the more.

Shane waltzes in over half an hour late, carrying two pizza boxes. He tosses them on the counter. “Soup’s on, boys.” Then he looks over at Ryan and says, so quietly Steven can barely make it out, “Hey, Ryan.”

“Hi.”

There’s a pregnant pause while Steven considers whether he has been rendered invisible. He coughs.

“Hey, Steve,” Shane says, flipping open the nearest pizza box to grab a slice. 

“Have fun in New Mexico?” If Ryan’s going to be weirdly grumpy all night, Steven will just circumvent him altogether.

There’s another long moment of silence while Shane considers the question. Ryan’s opened another bottle of beer and he’s swigging from it, his face and neck red with what Steven can only assume is anger. Yeah, they definitely fought, and from the looks of it, it was a doozy.

“Oh, loads,” Shane says dismissively. “Loads of fun. Really eye-opening. Ghosts are real, can you believe it? Boy, when I’m wrong I’m really wrong.”

Ryan sucks in a breath and then he lets it out in one long, slow exhale. Shane’s shoulders ratchet up, like he’s instinctively bracing himself for a beer bottle to the head but like he also feels he might deserve it.

“Shall we work?” Steven asks, regretting the artificial brightness in his voice, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.

Some time later, Shane goes to the bathroom, and Ryan gets up from the kitchen table to pace. He pulls a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream out of the freezer and starts forcefully scooping it into a bowl.

Steven considers the arm strength required to get that much traction on a completely frozen container of ice cream.

“Can you _believe_ that guy?” Ryan asks, half to Steven and half to himself.

“I thought the idea about the grocery game was kind of fun, actually,” Steven ventures.

Ryan waves it away. “No, not—I mean, the fuckin’ nerve, coming here, just throwing the pizzas on the counter. Tossing shit everywhere like he owns the place.”

Steven blinks. He is no longer certain he knows what Ryan’s even talking about. The guy’s still scooping. There’s easily three servings worth of ice cream in the bowl right now and he’s still going. He’s in danger of running out of bowl.

“_Loads of fun_,” Ryan grumbles. “I could have strangled him, you know? You know, Steve? And not a jury in the fuckin’ world would convict me.” He points the ice cream scoop at Steven for emphasis.

Steven nods. “I’m sure you’re right,” he says, because he read somewhere that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re held hostage by a crazy person with a weapon. You’re supposed to agree with them and keep them calm until you can get away.

“And did you see how _tall_ he was when he walked in? Looming over us like that? Like, where does he get off?”

“Dunno, Ryan,” Shane says from the doorway to the hall. “Where do I _get off_?”

Ryan freezes. His whole face goes mottled, the flush creeping down his neck. There’s ice cream dripping from the scoop, making a little puddle on the counter.

“Oh, you really want to do this now?” Ryan throws the ice cream scoop in the sink with a clatter and cracks his neck like he’s gearing up for an actual physical fight. Steven spares a sympathetic glance to the ice cream in the bowl, which will surely now be left to melt.

“What, not in front of the kid?” Shane asks. “Like he doesn’t already know?”

Assuming Steven’s the kid in question—and even that he’s only fifty-fifty on—he really, _really_ doesn’t know.

“I’m actually older than Ryan,” Steven mutters, but they’re not listening. They’re too busy circling each other, and the whole thing’s as incomprehensible to Steven as their banter, the rhythm of their real fights is as relentless and mystifying as the rhythm of their play ones.

Steven feels sure that whatever they fought about in New Mexico, and are about to fight about again now, he wants no part of it. He backs out of the room as the yelling starts and slips out the door to his car. On the way home he says a few silent words of prayer.

When Steven gets home he looks at his calendar. He’s supposed to be leaving Buzzfeed in fewer than three weeks’ time. He’s not sure he can do it in good conscience if things are about to come crumbling around their ears, ruined before they even have a chance to start.

*

Fortunately the whole thing seems to resolve itself.

Steven doesn’t know how or why, and he doesn’t ask. Their friendship is not his business, after all, and if the fight was Unsolved-related it’s extra not his business. What is his business is, well, _the business_.

What he does know is _when_. One night during a generally sullen, unproductive meeting, about a week after the big blowup, Steven steps out to take a call with a would-be sponsor.

As he walks back in the kitchen, there’s a sudden flurry of movement. Ryan’s perched on the marble of the kitchen island, papers strewn around him, all over the floor. Shane’s kneeling near his feet, picking up papers from the floor where they’ve fallen, haphazardly sorting through them. The back of his neck looks sunburned.

“Was there an earthquake in here while I was on the phone?” Steven asks, surveying the scene. “Was it the big one? Ryan, your hair.”

Ryan runs his hand through his hair, which is standing up ridiculously.

“Must’ve been messing with it while I was trying to figure out this incorporation stuff,” he says. He worries at his lip, which is bitten and red.

“I can help,” Shane offers, handing the stack back to Ryan. “Come sit, and we’ll sort through them together.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ryan says. He smiles a little, and Steven swears it’s the first smile he’s seen out of the guy all week. That Shane’s the one to pull it out of him is all the greater relief.

“The brilliant Ryan Bergara, unafraid to stand up to ghoulies and ghosties, undone by paperwork,” Shane says, dipping a careful toe in the water of teasing.

“In what universe am I unafraid to stand up to ghoulies and ghosties?” 

“The same universe as the one where you’re brilliant, apparently,” Shane says. “So, a parallel universe very similar to this one, but just a _little_ bit wrong.”

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan says, but his voice is—thank goodness—fond and not hostile.

“Just kidding, you are brilliant,” Shane promises him. He pats a sticking-up bit of Ryan’s hair back down, and Ryan doesn’t flinch away, and Steven breathes a silent sigh of relief.

Hopefully now things will go back to normal.

*

Shane’s last day at Buzzfeed full-time is a beautiful spring day in mid-May. The video team throws him a going-away party at a local bar that night, and Ryan and Steven crash it because they know no one will mind. Ex-Buzzfeeders, once gone, retain a certain in-the-trenches sense of being forever welcome.

Steven won’t stay late. He doesn’t come out to bars much, since he rarely drinks more than a few sips of something nice with a meal, and even then only rarely. He’s loosened up on this over the years—it’s tough to host a food show and be totally closed off to alcohol—but he’s still not entirely comfortable in the bar atmosphere.

He sticks close to Ryan and Shane for a while, and then when he loses track of them he plays some pool with Adam, a game of darts with Annie.

Still, he’s ready to go any time, and when he spies Ryan and Shane sneaking toward the exit he makes a beeline for it too.

“Where are you two slinking off to?” he asks, inserting himself between them and the door.

“Uh,” Ryan says. He glances at Shane.

“I’m just, like, really wiped, man,” Shane says, nodding in the direction of the door. He does look rough, necktie pulled loose from his rumpled shirt, more than a little tipsy. “Thought I’d duck out. And Ryan has an early morning, so we were gonna, uh. Share a Lyft.”

“Bailing on your own farewell party, for shame,” Steven says. Still, this turn of events suits him well. “Mind if I get in on that action?”

“Get in on that action,” Ryan says faintly. Shane just blinks at him.

“Since we’re all going in the same direction, more or less. You know how I get at bars. I hit my limit pretty fast.”

Shane and Ryan exchange an inscrutable look. They’re doing that _thing_, the annoying thing where they communicate with only a series of rapidly changing facial expressions that Steven can’t begin to translate.

“I’ll pay,” Steven offers, sweetening the pot.

“Sure,” Shane says finally. Steven gets the impression that whatever silent squabble they were having, Ryan just lost it.

They spend a few quiet moments out by the curb, waiting for their ride to show up. Shane’s got his hands in his pockets, looking thoughtfully up at the sky, where stars would be if it wasn’t for all the light pollution. Ryan’s got his phone practically glued to his face, typing away with agitation.

Occasionally Shane’s phone pings, but he ignores it.

“Your phone’s going nuts,” Steven points out.

“Yup,” Shane says, sort of punchily. “That is…accurate. Thanks, Steven.”

“You’re welcome.”

When their ride shows up, Ryan slides in the backseat and all the way over to the far side. Steven sneaks in just after him, cutting Shane off at the pass.

“Whoops!” he says. “Dibs on the middle seat. It should really be Ryan, he’s the shortest, but he’s already in, so.”

After a moment’s pause and a flex of his hand, Shane goes for the front seat. But their driver’s got a messy car, his personal belongings all over the front passenger side, and so in the end Shane slides in next to Steven. All three of them are crunched together in the back of a Honda Civic, Steven nestled between Ryan and Shane like three little peas in a pod.

“Isn’t _this_ cozy,” Steven says.

“Very,” Shane agrees.

Ryan grunts.

“We are just snug as bugs in a rug back here,” Steven goes on. “Aren’t we just so snug, Ry—”

“Oh my god, Steven,” Ryan says, not letting him get the rest out. “Are you kidding me right now?”

Shane starts laughing. He laughs so hard he starts to cough.

The driver looks back at them in the rearview. He cocks his head.

“You fellas headed to the same place?”

“Nope,” Steven corrects cheerily. “Three addresses, all in WeHo. They should be in the app.”

“Yeah, they are,” the driver says. “I just…never mind.”

Shane’s place is closest, so he gets dropped off first.

“Thanks for the ride, chief,” he says to the driver as he gets out. “Thanks for paying, Steven.”

“You’re very welcome, Shane,” Steven says, beaming at his exemplary politeness. “Congratulations on your big night. Now that we’re all free, the fun can really start.”

Shane leans over, peering into the backseat of the car. “So here is my place,” he announces to no one in particular. “My apartment. Where I live. Where I sleep. Where my bed is.”

“Sure is,” Ryan agrees.

“If anybody wanted to come inside for a nightcap, that would be fine,” Shane says. “_Not you_, Steven.”

“Well, _obviously_ not me,” Steven says. “As I don’t really drink.”

Shane sighs.

The driver clears his throat. “Uh, gents, not to rush whatever _this_ is, but—”

“Okay, well, night, boys!” Shane says. He gives Steven an ironic little bow, “Steven,” and then to Ryan, “Little scaredy baby.”

He slams the door to the car so hard the frame rattles and heads up to his apartment. Steven makes the driver stay until he’s safely inside, and then they head to Ryan’s.

Steven looks at Ryan, who has sunk all the way down in his seat like he’s trying to slide to the floor.

“That was weird,” he says. “Oh man, Shane was dru-uuunk, huh?”

“We can totally take you home first,” Ryan bulldozes right through him. “I’m sure you’re ready to call it a night. Get in bed with your robe and slippies, read a few chapters of the scripture.”

“The scripture’s not going anywhere, Ryan,” Steven reassures him. “Let’s see you home safe, okay? I know you were both drinking tonight. Wouldn’t want any harm to befall my business partners.”

Ryan slumps over against the window, either pathetically grateful or crestfallen, and it surely cannot be the latter.

He’s probably just in awe of what a good friend Steven is. 

*

It’s go time on the official paperwork on the second to last day of May, 2019.

“Signed, sealed, delivered, baby!” Shane whoops, clapping Steven on the shoulder as he attaches scans of the final supporting documents and hits “submit.”

They’re all crowded around, where else, Ryan’s kitchen table. Ryan’s picked some cheap champagne and snacks to celebrate and Shane pops open the champagne now, spraying half the kitchen with it, and Ryan to boot.

Steven turns around in the chair, grinning at them, ready to say something—and then he watches as Ryan reaches for Shane with champagne-sticky hands and pulls him down to plant a firm, sloppy kiss square on his mouth.

Shane’s hands flex and find their way to Ryan’s back, but Ryan’s already pulling away, giggly and giddy. He wipes his mouth and then he looks around and sees Steven staring.

“Uh,” he says.

“Uh,” Steven says.

“Oh thank god,” Shane says.

“What,” Steven starts. He squints at Ryan. “That—what—you—”

“It’s an old fraternity tradition of mine,” Ryan says quickly. “It’s—when something really good happens, we’d celebrate by giving our brothers a kiss. Right on the ol’ pie hole.”

Shane lets out a whoosh of air, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and a wheeze. “Just brothers being brothers, kissing on the lips, as tradition dictates,” he says. “What frat were you in again, Ryan? Remind me. Phi Beta Bamboozle, was it?”

“Actually it was Delta Sigma Shut the Fuck Up, Shane.”

And then Ryan’s moving forward. He’s suddenly close to Steven, very close, _too close_, and then Ryan’s clamped both of his hands around Steven’s neck and is hauling him up ungently to kiss him full on the mouth too. 

It is, as kisses go, quite businesslike, but Steven’s still a little shell-shocked when Ryan pulls away.

Shane gapes at them.

“I…guess that makes sense,” Steven says. He’s not someone who gets kissed on anything like regular basis, but he allows that other people tend to be much more casual about it than him. “I have heard that some fraternities have some really weird old traditions.”

Unfortunately for everyone, Ryan’s roommates, Roland and Danny, choose exactly that moment to wander into the kitchen.

“What’s up, chuck?” Roland asks. “We heard cheering and jubilation.”

“And the unmistakable sound of a bottle of liquor opening,” Danny says, his head swiveling around for the champagne. “Oh hey, did you guys do your thing?”

“Oh boy, and how,” Shane exclaims. “Hey, what impeccable timing. Ryan, aren’t Danny and Roland your frat bros? Shouldn’t you celebrate with them too?”

His eyes are twinkling. Ryan deflates.

“Yes,” he says, resigned.

He walks across the kitchen and he kisses first Roland and then Danny right on the mouth, so emphatically there’s a loud smacking noise each time he pulls away.

“I’ve just kissed you both to celebrate an exciting achievement,” Ryan announces, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “In accordance with our fraternity tradition. This is something we do all the time and is totally normal and fine.”

“Is it usual to narrate a tradition as you perform it?” Shane wonders out loud. “Steven, thoughts?”

Danny simply pivots and walks out.

Roland stares at Ryan. He nods slowly. “Yes. Yep. Normal! _Fine_!”

Then he, too, backs out of the kitchen.

“Well, I think it’s nice,” Steven says, and he does. More men should be unafraid to show affection with each other. If this is a way for Ryan to loosen up and express some physical intimacy within the incredibly strict confines of socially acceptable masculine behavior, well, good for him. “Just a nice platonic show of love and support. Non-toxic masculinity in action. Count me in.”

Ryan is looking very flushed and twitchy. Steven thinks he too would probably be a little flustered if he’d just kissed four men in a row, longstanding tradition or no.

“You really are extraordinary,” Shane tells Ryan, looking him over. His eyes are shining. “Honestly, I can’t even tell if I’m mad or impressed. Just the absolute stubbornest idiot.”

“Don’t be mad,” Ryan says. Steven doesn’t know what Shane could possibly be to be mad about. Maybe he just doesn’t like to be kissed. “Come on, not today. We started a company today.”

“Yeah we did,” Shane says, and the corners of his mouth pull up into a little smile. He pours them three glasses of champagne, full to the brim.

*

One day near the end of the summer, Steven forgets his laptop at Ryan’s house.

It’s not a big deal; in fact he forgets about it until later the following evening, when he’s out for dinner with some friends not far from Ryan’s place and decides to swing by on his way home to pick it up.

He rings the doorbell, but nobody answers. Probably nobody’s home—it is Friday night, after all—but Steven gives it one more go.

He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot on the porch, about to give up and try again tomorrow, when he hears footsteps. Finally the door unlocks and Ryan opens it, barely the width of his own body.

“Hey, Steven, what’s up?” Ryan says. He’s looking conspicuously spiffy tonight, his jeans unripped, a casual blazer over his shirt instead of a ratty hoodie. Steven didn’t even know he owned a casual blazer.

“You look nice!” Steven says, hoping to encourage the behavior with positive reinforcement. Maybe he’ll get Ryan in a trendy jacket yet. “Forgot my laptop here yesterday. I was in the area, so I thought I’d just swing by and grab it.”

“Unannounced,” Ryan says. “Great. Good. Okay. Sometimes people text about this sort of thing, but it’s…no problem.”

He doesn’t open the door any wider, though. Steven looks around, waiting.

“So can I get my laptop?”

“How about I get it for you?” Without waiting for an answer Ryan starts to do it, moving away from the door, and Steven slides in behind him.

“Oh, it’s no problem, I know right where it is,” Steven says. He doesn’t want to be an inconvenience.

Ryan’s hands clench into little fists, but he doesn’t say anything. He merely leads Steven into the kitchen, where Steven knows his laptop will be waiting for him on the counter.

Steven’s surprised to find that Ryan’s _cooking_, like a full-blown proper dinner. There are pots and pans bubbling and simmering on the stove, and Steven can smell some sort of bread product baking in the oven.

“Did you make bread?” he asks, impressed.

“Shane made bread,” Ryan says.

As if summoned, Shane pops back in the kitchen from the garage. He’s got a bottle of wine in one hand and two wine glasses in the other. He too is looking fresh, in dark jeans and a thin sweater in a beautiful classic knit.

“Oh no, did we have a meeting I forgot about? Guys, it’s Friday, it’s okay to take a break,” Steven says.

“Oh hey, Steven,” Shane says, visibly deflating. “You…are also here.”

“Steven forgot his laptop at the office,” Ryan provides. “He swung by to pick it up. He didn’t text me first, isn’t that fine and great?”

Right at that moment one of the smaller pots on the stove boils over, sending hot liquid all over the burner. Shane sets the wine down and moves to turn it down, stirring fitfully at whatever’s inside.

“What are you making? It smells great,” Steven says. He perches on the table, where two place settings are already set, real plates and cloth napkins and everything. Usually for work dinners it’s something simple, pasta or a stir fry or takeout shoveled down their gullets while they work.

“Pan-roasted duck breast,” Shane says, “and a sweet potato mash.”

Steven leans over to take a peek at the cookbook he’s using. “Thomas Keller! Very fancy.”

“He a close personal friend of yours?”

“Nah, he turned us down for the show. I’d love to meet him one day, though. Man, that duck smells amazing.”

Ryan sighs. He takes off his blazer and whips it onto the nearest part of the sectional sofa in the adjoining den, which is open to the kitchen. Steven watches it sail through the air with detached interest.

“Steven, would you like to stay for dinner?” Shane asks, the picture of politeness, if a little stiff about it. His mom should be proud.

“I already ate,” Steven says. Then he gets another whiff. “Well, maybe I could stick around for a few bites.”

Ryan laughs for, like, a solid thirty seconds, which is strange because Steven hadn’t thought he’d said anything particularly funny. Then he moves to the cupboard to bring out another plate and set of silverware for Steven.

The food comes out beautifully, the conversation starts to loosen as they go, and Steven finally feels himself relaxing, letting go of an uncertain tension he hadn’t even realized he was holding. They haven’t all hung out like this together, without work dominating the conversation, in a really long time. Maybe not _ever_, the three of them. It’s nice.

Shane finds out over dinner that Steven’s somehow never seen Jurassic Park (“It was rated PG13, and when it came out I was only _three_!”), so after dinner they wind up on the big sectional in the den to remedy that.

They make it almost halfway through before they fall asleep, Shane and Ryan curled up next to each other on the far end of one couch, Ryan’s head lolling on Shane’s shoulder. Steven watches the movie to the end, determined to get through it because he knows at least 70% of their references and in-jokes will make more sense to him if he does.

And Steven watches them sleep. Not in a creepy way, he just likes the way they are pushed flush together, unguarded and open and relaxed. He likes to see Ryan’s face soften in sleep, the anxiety falling away. He even likes the way Shane’s hand lies open against Ryan’s leg; he appreciates the quiet, easy trust it demonstrates. He knows they would never sit this way if they were awake.

As if he can sense Steven thinking it, Ryan’s eyes flutter open. He takes in the scroll of the end credits on the screen, and Steven watching him. Steven expects him to spring away from Shane, to make some joke about it, but Ryan only smiles sleepily. He stays put.

“’S the movie done?” he asks quietly, so Shane won’t wake.

“Yeah. I really liked it. You guys conked out during the part with the sick triceratops.”

“Of course you liked it, it’s one of the greatest films of all time.” Ryan yawns. He flexes his hands, but otherwise he doesn’t stretch. He looks, for once, completely at peace.

“Thanks for inviting me to stay,” Steven says. “I had a really good time. I like hanging out with you guys. I don’t know if you didn’t think I would want to or—well. I just…you’re my friends as well as my business partners. It doesn’t have to be all work.”

Ryan smiles and closes his eyes. Steven thinks he might be drifting back off, but after a moment he opens them again.

“I’m glad you stayed,” he says. “Of course you’re our friend, Steve. It’s not—it was never—it isn’t that we don’t like hanging out with you.”

“That’s good,” Steven says. He didn’t think they didn’t, not really. He does feel as if he is on the outside looking in, just in this one small way, and he’s beginning to think that won’t change—and that maybe it doesn’t have to, that it shouldn’t. People can be friends in different ways. He doesn’t need to always get called up for movie night, although he hopes he will be sometimes.

“It’s just that there are some things—” Ryan starts, and then he frowns and goes silent.

“Some things?” Steven presses. It’s not often Ryan gets like this around people, contemplative, his guard down.

“Things we want to do that you’re not into,” Ryan says.

“Like watch Jurassic Park? I said it was really good!”

“Not like Jurassic Park.”

Then Steven understands.

“Oh,” he says. “Like _drugs_.”

Ryan raises his eyebrows. Shane twists and buries his head in Ryan’s neck, snuffling.

“Sure, man. Like pot.”

Steven can’t deny that, even though it’s legal here in California, he still prefers not to be around it. He can’t shake the many years of lectures and cautions and D.A.R.E. classes about it. He still hears his mom’s voice in his head, warning him that he’ll lose brain cells.

“I guess that’s fair enough,” he agrees. “Hey, it’s late. I’m gonna head.”

He gets up and stretches, checking for his keys and his wallet.

“Hey Steve?” Ryan says.

“Yeah?”

Steven looks at him, but Ryan doesn’t say anything else for a while. His eyes are closed, and Steven thinks maybe he’s drifted off again, but no.

“Nothing,” he says finally. “Never mind. Just, it’s not about you, okay? We think you’re dope. I’m so glad you’re doing this with us, and I know Shane is too. I want to make sure you don’t ever doubt that, even if…well. No matter what.”

Steven feels warm inside, equal parts pleased and grateful. Then his stomach does a swoop of unease.

“Are you dying? Do you have a terminal illness you’re not telling me about?”

Ryan grins up at him. “No, dude, I’m not dying. I’m trying to team-build over here.”

“You’re really shitty at it,” Shane mumbles, stirring at last. Ryan swats at him.

“Okay, well, I’m going to leave you guys to your,” and Steven pauses for effect, “_pot date_.”

“Oh my god.”

“Get it? Like _hot_ date? Only with marijuana? Because—”

“Yeah, we get it,” Ryan grumbles. His face is red, probably because Shane’s draped over him like an enormous blanket.

“Good joke,” Shane agrees, his voice muffled from where his mouth’s pressed against the shoulder seam of Ryan’s shirt. “Haven’t heard anyone call it _marijuana_ since my high school guidance counselor told me it was why I’d never amount to anything, but okay.”

Steven leaves them to it.

*

In late August, after a deliriously busy summer working crammed together in Ryan’s kitchen, they start looking for a real workspace. If they want to hire a couple of full-time employees they’ll need the breathing room, and although Ryan’s roommates haven’t said so, Steven’s beginning to get the sense that playing host to the unofficial Watcher office for months has been testing their patience. He’s been seeing less and less of them, anyway.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan says, waving his concerns away. “They don’t use the kitchen for anything except the beer fridge.”

“Some people just call it a fridge, you know.”

“Steve, he’s not kidding. One time before you came on board I opened the oven and I found they’d been using it to store old newspapers,” Shane says.

“They read _newspapers_?” Steven asks, curious.

“It was actually back issues of Sports Illustrated. I was being generous.”

“Those might be worth something someday,” Ryan says, a little sullen.

“Ryan, a ten-year-old magazine will never be worth anything,” Shane says. “Especially not since you jizzed all over it.”

Steven coughs around the cheese ball he’d been eating, taking a hurried sip of water to help it go down.

Ryan scowls. “I didn’t—the Lakers won the championship that year!”

“We know, buddy,” Shane says placatingly, even though he almost certainly didn’t. Then he rolls his eyes at Steven and performs a rude gesture with his hand, mimicking jerking off. “Oh, oh god, the championship, _oh_—"

Steven feels his face go hot. He’s never really gotten used to the way Ryan and Shane can so casually joke about that kind of thing. It feels sort of important that he learn to communicate in this mysterious guy language, though, so he grins back at Shane.

“It’s lucky the Lakers aren’t as good now, or Watcher would never have gotten off the ground,” he ventures. “Ryan would just be locked in his room, staring at his ‘Bron poster, chafing.”

Shane grins wide and points at him, obviously pleased by the effort. “Don’t know who that is, but yes!”

“Shane, you piece of shit, you do too know who LeBron James is. He’s only the most famous—” Ryan starts, and it sets him and Shane off on a long spat. Steven sits back and closes his eyes to half-listen, enjoying his cheese balls.

The bantering was a lot in the beginning, but once Steven realized it was almost always affectionate the unrelenting rhythm of it began to take on a relaxing, almost meditative quality for him. Now working in the same space with Ryan and Shane gently sniping at each other in the background is like having his own personal white noise machine.

“—_course_ I’m not sick of you,” Ryan is saying, “in _fact_,” and then there’s a little _clink_ noise.

Steven opens his eyes to find that Ryan has laid two keys on the table. Ryan flicks one in Steven’s direction. The other he slides toward Shane.

“What’s this?”

“Key to the house,” Ryan says. “So you guys can get in and lock up if I’m not home. Like, if you leave something here while we were working, or you get here and I’m still in the shower, or…whatever.”

“Thanks,” Steven says, confused. “But we’re getting ready to move to a real office soon anyway, right? Did something happen with the lease?”

They’d finally settled on a temporary three-month lease on a little open plan co-op space downtown, just to give them a transition space before they settle in somewhere for real in the new year.

“No, yeah, it would have made more sense to give you these in June,” Ryan agrees. “But I wasn’t, uh. I guess I wasn’t ready then.”

“Ryan,” Shane says. That’s it, just Ryan’s name, just _Ryan_, and then he goes silent. He reaches for his key and clenches his fingers around it, so it disappears entirely in his fist. Then he opens his palm to look at it again. He’s watching Ryan intently, the bones of a tiny smile taking shape.

“But I’m ready now,” Ryan says, meeting Shane’s eye with a tilt of his chin. “I want you to have it.”

“Well, thanks, I guess,” Steven says, because Shane is still just standing there and breathing moistly instead of saying anything. He pockets his own key.

“Thank you,” Shane echoes softly after a moment. He’s still got the key resting on his open palm. He touches it gently with the pointer finger of his other hand, as if the key is something precious.

Steven shrugs. He goes back to his spreadsheets and his cheese balls.

*

They get ready to move out of the kitchen and into the temp office about a month later, rendering the whole key thing just as unnecessary as Steven had thought.

They don’t have that much to pack up—just a few boxes of papers, some props, and some office supplies—but they make a day of it anyway, one final day in Ryan’s kitchen where it all began.

Steven can feel them giving themselves over to mythmaking. When they look on this summer, the joys of it, the unprecedented stress, the agonizing uncertainty, it’ll be through the late morning light of this kitchen, and it might seem more like a dream of someone else’s life.

They get a little day-drunk—even Steven has a glass of wine in celebration, because sometimes he gets tired of feeling like the stick-in-the-mud, the odd man out. Sometimes it feels good to loosen up a little, to laugh too loudly at Ryan’s bad impressions, and then at Shane’s better impressions of Ryan’s. He doesn’t always get their in-jokes or references, but he’s getting better at going with the flow.

At some point in the late afternoon he needs to go to the bathroom, but Shane beats him to the downstairs one. Steven goes upstairs, to use the one attached to Ryan’s room. He doesn’t spend a lot of time up here, but he’s sure Ryan won’t mind.

He’s washing his hands when he notices there are more products in here than he remembers, bottles of hair product and lotion perched precariously along the edge of the sink. There are two razors. There are two toothbrushes. There’s a little bottle of cuticle oil, and Steven’s _seen_ Ryan’s cuticles.

Steven’s not a snooper, but he’s curious now. He goes to Ryan’s closet, and it’s already wide open—so that’s not even really snooping, is it? He’s just standing in front of a closet, passively observing its contents. 

Ryan’s jerseys are pushed to one side. The other side of the closet is full of other shirts: soft flannels in various plaids, button-downs in colorful floral prints. A distinctive shirt covered in little brown rabbits that Steven recognizes. 

Steven goes back downstairs.

“Hey, what’s the deal with your closet?” he asks Ryan.

Ryan starts coughing.

Shane watches him with interest. “Very attractive,” he editorializes as Ryan has to lean over the sink, white wine spilling out both sides of his mouth.

“Pardon?” Ryan gasps when he can talk.

“Shane’s stuff is all over your room,” Steven says. “Shirts in the closet, products in the bathroom. The extra toothbrush. Is he, like…staying here?”

Shane shifts on the stool where he’s perched, sitting on the kitchen island. He rests his chin in his hand.

“Ryan?” he asks.

“He’s…yeah,” Ryan says. “I mean, he crashes here sometimes.”

This seems a little weird to Steven. That was an awful lot of Shane’s stuff in Ryan’s room.

He’s about to tug on that thread a little when something occurs to him: the money thing. None of them are taking salaries right now, after all. Maybe Shane can’t afford to cover his own place. Maybe he’s between leases; maybe he’s embarrassed about it.

Steven can’t think of any other reason why Shane would give up his fortress of solitude and set up camp with what feels, at times, like half a frat house. Sure, Ryan’s house is nice, but it’s not _that_ nice.

Although come to think of it, Steven hasn’t seen Roland or Danny in weeks now.

Still, the kindest thing to do, Steven knows, would be to let it go.

“I can’t believe you’re having sleepovers without me,” Steven jokes, playing it off. “Do you play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board?”

“Uh.”

Shane snickers. “Stiff as a what, sorry?”

“It’s that game,” Steven starts to explain, “the one where you—”

Ryan shakes his head, cutting Steven off. “He knows the game, he’s just being an asshole.”

“Oh, I’m being the—_I’m_ being—”

They both look very tired. Steven’s tired too. This whole summer has been a mad dash, and they’re all burned out from it. Having a real office space will help.

“Please don’t fight,” Steven says softly, before they have a chance to really get going. “Not today.”

He doesn’t ask for much, but he wants to retain good memories of this day, wants to keep the hazy dreamlike quality of the kitchen intact. Shane and Ryan pause mid-bicker, and in turn they shut their mouths.

So instead they all have another glass of wine, and then another, and Steven’s—tipsier than he’s been in a long time, not as if it takes much, and they’re all laughing and reminiscing. Steven gets a little sappy, because that’s the kind of person he is, telling them how proud he is, how excited he is for the world to see what they’ve been working on.

And then things get a little too fuzzy, and Steven doesn’t remember much after that. He knows they order too much takeout from like three different places, because they can’t agree. He knows Ryan teaches him how to play quarters, which Steven develops an immediate determination to win.  
  
After that, zip.

*

He wakes up later—how much later he doesn’t know—in Ryan’s bedroom. He’d fallen asleep on top of the fully-made bed, still in all his clothes.

His mouth tastes funny, his head is pounding. Steven wonders if he is experiencing his very first hangover. If so, he hates it.

The room’s dark, though. It can’t be morning yet. A glance at his phone shows that it’s not even midnight, and the other guys are nowhere to be seen. The house is quiet. 

The cottonmouth is killing him. Steven’s _got_ to get a drink of water, he feels like he’ll die if he doesn’t, and so he forces himself to get up and creep down the stairs.

He makes it as far as the kitchen when he hears a weird noise coming from the den, an odd, strangled groan.

If the guys crashed in there—if one of them drank too much, if he’s sick, if he needs medical attention—

Steven moves without a second thought to check, worried for his friends. It doesn’t even _occur_ to him that there might be a reason he doesn’t want to open that door. Somehow, after everything, he doesn’t even hesitate.

He pushes open the door, and what he sees stops him in his tracks.

Ryan’s sitting on Shane’s lap on the couch—astride his _lap_, his knees braced on either side of Shane’s big thighs. They’re kissing, like—well, like Steven doesn’t usually kiss people, because he knows where it leads. They’re kissing with passion and with intent and with shocking, absolute familiarity.

They’re kissing like they do it all the time.

Steven squints into the dimly-lit room, half-convinced he’s seeing things, half-convinced he’s definitely still drunk. It could even be that he’s still asleep. This would be a weird dream, but maybe not the weirdest.

Shane makes that noise again, that moan, bitten-back to keep as quiet as he can. It was him that Steven heard from the hallway, and he’s demonstrably _not_ dying, except perhaps in the _la petite mort_ sort of way.

Ryan’s got his hand in Shane’s lap between them, down his pants. So that explains the noises, Steven thinks. He feels oddly detached from it, but he finds he can’t make himself back out of the room, can’t stop looking. It’s just that he’s never seen anything like it.

He’s not loud, but the light from the hall, the noise of the door opening, give him away before he has time to react.

Ryan’s and Shane’s heads snap up to stare. Shane just freezes, caught: a deer in headlights. Ryan scrambles out of his lap with a shocked squeak, a flurry of frantic movement as he scuttles along the couch.

“Oh,” Steven says, because he’s really not sure what a person’s supposed to say in this situation. “Huh.”

Shane’s saying something too, but Steven can’t really hear him. He’s too busy fitting all the puzzle pieces together in his mind, _click-click-click_, each one falling into place after the one before it. Abruptly the last several months of his life fall into focus all at once, like finally putting on a pair of glasses in the right prescription. 

As soon as Ryan can speak, he falls on his own sword.

“Steven, I’m so sorry,” he says. “This was all—it was my fault, Shane wanted to tell you, I just—couldn’t.”

Shane sighs. He hands Ryan his shirt and starts feeling about for his own, somewhere on the couch in the pile of blankets and pillows that lives there permanently.

Steven’s still so surprised he’s having trouble working himself around to upset, or angry, or whatever Ryan’s clearly expecting him to be. He’s _curious_. This seems like a pretty big development. He wonders if the others know, TJ and Matty, the rest of the Unsolved team they’ve brought on to help with Watcher.

He wonders if it’s been going on for years, and everybody knows but him. That’s when the _hurt_ hits him, rough and real as a punch to the esophagus.

“When?” he asks. “How long?”

Ryan shrugs. “We’ve been dancing around it a while, I guess. But nothing happened until March. The Unsolved trip to New Mexico.”

“The fight you guys had,” Steven says, putting it together at last. “I remember it. It was brutal.”

“We got drunk after that shoot,” Shane says, like it’s not his fondest memory. “We hooked up. We—there was some disagreement about what it meant or didn’t mean.”

“Some of us were being little babies about it,” Ryan says, and Steven doesn’t have to guess who. 

“But that was six months ago,” Steven says. He understands keeping something like that quiet at first, of course he does. If you weren’t certain, if you weren’t ready, you wouldn’t rock the boat. Sure.

Six months is something else entirely. That’s half a year of sneaking around and not telling him; of, in some cases, outright lying. It’s not some fling, some friends-with-benefits thing that Steven can rationalize even if he can’t truly _understand_. Shane lives here, they live here together. And they didn’t tell him.

What’s more, it isn’t clear if they were ever going to tell him.

And then something _really_ horrible occurs to him.

“Did you think I wouldn’t be okay with it?” Steven asks. He can barely say it. He’s nauseated and dizzy, and he thinks he might still be a little drunk after all. “Did you—because of my faith, did you think…?”

He can’t even make himself say it, because it’s everything he’s been afraid of for years. It’s everything that shadowed him when he first started at Buzzfeed, when he knew people were looking at him and making assumptions about what he felt in his heart.

Steven knows what it feels like to not be trusted. He doesn’t blame anyone for it, if they’ve been hurt by people who believe what he believes. He just thought they knew different. He thought Ryan knew better.

But Ryan’s looking at him now like a cornered animal, wary and fearful. He’s got his shirt clutched to his chest, covering himself.

“God no,” Shane cuts in, alarmed. “Steven, it was never about that. It was never about you, specifically, as a person. It was about you, our business partner.”

“I just thought it was a really shitty thing we did,” Ryan says, and his voice is hoarse. “Convincing you to join the company, bringing you on board, and then changing all the rules on you. And I knew it was shitty, and I felt guilty as hell about it, and so I—we hid it.”

Shane’s tight-lipped, not saying anything, and Steven recognizes this must have been a big point of contention for them this summer. It must have been difficult for Shane to keep his mouth shut and say nothing, knowing he should speak up.

He must love Ryan an awful lot. He must be truly head-over-heels _stupid_ for him.

Despite Steven’s hurt feelings, his bafflement, the thought makes him smile. He’s always been soft for a good romance. 

Ryan clears his throat. “If you don’t see a way forward with Watcher after this, I’ll understand.”

The thought hadn’t even _occurred_ to Steven.

Perhaps this is a breach of trust, but it’s the kind he can make sense of. He knows what it’s like to want something so much that it threatens to make you a different person, to dismantle all your values and reset your moral compass.

If you’re going to lie to your friends and family, to deceive and dissemble, at least it should be for the very best reason there ever was to do anything: because you love someone so much you can’t not.

“I think I just need to go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Steven says. “We can talk tomorrow, okay?”

Here, in the house where they spent all these months working and making plans, it just feels like—a lot. There’s still too much bare skin in this room.

Steven’s pride is still too sore, because he knows that it’s ridiculous that he missed this, that he didn’t notice. Almost anyone else would have noticed, and it makes him feel like the butt of a joke even if no one’s laughing.

*

The next morning, he ignores his workaholic tendencies, he shuts off his alarm, and he sleeps in. It’s only fair to let the guys get started unpacking the office without him, Steven thinks.

Let that be their punishment: to lift heavy things, and bicker over setting up the copier-printer, and worry about him. It’s petty, perhaps, but Steven’s not a saint. 

He’s getting ready to call a car at about 9:30, because his is still at Ryan’s. Before he gets the chance, there’s a knock at his door. When he opens it Shane’s there, holding a Starbucks cup and wearing a sheepish expression.

“Coffee for you,” he says, and he holds it out to Steven and then invites himself in.

Now that Steven’s thinking about it, he doesn’t think Shane’s ever been in his apartment. Steven would say they are friends, now, but they aren’t the sort of friends who hang out.

Shane sits himself on the couch and steeples his fingers together, looking at Steven over the tips of them.

If Steven squints, if he makes himself see Shane through Ryan’s eyes, he supposes he can see the appeal. Shane’s nice-looking enough, when he isn’t going out of his way to make himself unattractive with weird clothes and bad facial hair. He’s funny, and his eyes crinkle appealingly when he smiles.

But most of all he’s _steady_. He’s unshakeable, like an oak tree. It’s very settling.

“How are you?” he asks. “I know that must have been really upsetting.”

“Well my eyeballs didn’t burn out of my head, if that’s what you’re asking,” Steven says, a little perturbed. “I didn’t come home and pray for you.”

That’s a lie. Steven did come home and pray about it, for himself and for them. But he didn’t pray for anyone’s sins. He prayed for certainty and strength for them, and for himself, compassion and patience.

Shane laughs easily. “Not that. I don’t mean your delicate sensibilities.”

“I was just surprised. I would have thought Ryan would have told me.”

Shane nods at that, nice and easy, like he gets it. He clears his throat and looks off into the middle distance. Steven prepares himself for some kind of weird metaphor, but he doesn’t get it.

“Imagine what it would be like,” Shane says, “to be in Ryan’s shoes right now. Imagine if, after a decade of dating women, you had to go to your family and tell them you were with a man, and you didn’t know how they’d take it. Your friends. Your church?”

Steven knows he has family and friends who would not take that news well. There are people at his church, even here in liberal California, who would treat him differently for it.

“And that would be hard enough if you were just some guy trying to live your life,” Shane continues. “Now imagine that, because life is weird, you happen to be kind of famous on the internet.”

“I’d be out of my mind,” Steven says, and it’s true.

“And imagine you were trying to do all that while also taking the biggest risk you’ve ever taken in your professional life,” Shane goes on. “I’ve never seen him so shit-scared.”

He says it like punctuation, like that’s _something_, and Steven supposes it is. No one’s an expert on Ryan’s fear like Shane, who’s seen every flavor of it. If he says it, it must be true.

“So that’s why I didn’t push harder,” Shane finishes. It’s not an excuse, but as far as reasons go it’s a pretty good one.

Steven nods, accepting it. He accepts that these are extraordinary circumstances.

He weighs Shane, considering. It might not even be worth mentioning, but—in the interest of clearing the air:

“You probably won’t remember this,” Steven says, “but we were in this video together, a while ago. Right before Worth It and Unsolved took off.”

“Hangover food,” Shane says immediately. “Vegas. I remember.”

“You found me annoying then, and you made sure I knew it. You made sure Keith and the other guys knew it too. You didn’t stand up for me.” 

Steven says it like it’s a fact, and as far as he’s concerned, it is.

Shane doesn’t deny it. He just blinks, so slowly Steven thinks he’s closed his eyes, letting Steven’s hurt wash over him like it’s the least he can do.

“I didn’t know you. I didn’t know what to make of your…energy. The earnestness. It made me rude, and I’m sorry.”

“I remember that shoot so clearly,” Steven says, “because after it, I almost quit. I thought, I’m never going to fit in here. Ryan’s part of the reason I didn’t.”

“Is this where you tell me that if I hurt him, you’ll break that commandment about how you’re not supposed to kill?”

In spite of the seriousness of it all, Steven giggles. Shane gives him a little smile then, a crooked, private grin.

“No, I’m saying Ryan was there for me when I needed a friend, and I’m not going to bail on him now that he needs me. There was never any question of that. I just wish you’d both known it without me having to tell you.”

Shane leans in, hands on his knees, looking at him intently. “Your faith is unwavering,” he says. “Most people don’t live that way, not really. It’s your curse to be perpetually underestimated.”

Now it’s Steven’s turn to joke, because it’s getting a little heavy even for _him_. “I’m glad you guys haven’t been getting high this whole time. I was getting worried. I was planning to stage an intervention.”

“No, just alternately panicking and fu—_making love_ and panicking again.”

“It actually sounds worse when you say it like that, for some reason.”

Shane winks at him, big and exaggerated and bawdy. “Making sweet loooove,” he says.

“This is bullying,” Steven informs him. “You’re bullying me. I’m going to report you to HR.”

“You _are_ HR,” Shane says, nonplussed.

“Yeah, and I’m issuing you a stern warning, and be grateful it isn’t more. Come on, let’s go to the office. I want to see how you set it up.”

“I left Ryan to deal with the copier, so it’s even odds whether the building’s even still standing.”

Steven gets a ride with Shane. He sips his coffee and he lets himself sit there and bask in the way it finally feels good, it feels easy. Shane’s whistling a tune he can’t place. Steven doesn’t feel the need to chatter just to fill the silence.

It’s funny how now that Steven knows he’s the third-wheel, he feels _less_ like one and not more.

*

Shane bursts into their little temporary office space quite dramatically, arms outstretched. “He’s leaving Watcher! He’s quitting and he’s joining a monastery, the kind where they wear hair shirts and whip themselves, and it’s all our fault.”

Ryan spins around in his chair. “I knew I shouldn’t have sent a robot to do a man’s—oh.”

He spots Steven trailing behind, tentative.

“Hey,” Steven says.

“Hey,” Ryan says.

“You know, this is actually quite romantic,” Shane says. “I wonder if anyone’s ever considered—”

“Shut up,” Ryan tells him. “Steven, I’m so fucking sorry. I was such an asshole.”

“It’s okay.” Steven doesn’t really want to get schmoopy here, he knows Ryan will absolutely _hate_ it, but he just has to say this one thing. “I know there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about, and maybe I’m not very—worldly. But there’s plenty of stuff that I know that you don’t.”

“Microsoft Excel,” Shane whispers conspiratorially behind his hand. “_Quickbooks_.”

Steven ignores him, because he knows their rhythm now. He sees how they use it to set up tension and to diffuse it, each of them taking turns doing the heavy lifting to give the other a break. Now that he understands it, it’s like being out on the ocean, letting the push and pull of the waves batter you joyfully around, the sea spray in your face.

“I know how to trust the people in my life who have earned it,” he goes on, trying to get it all out in a rush before Ryan can stop him. “And when things scare me, I know how to talk about them instead of pushing them down or letting them rule my life. _And_ I know how to let my friends love me without questioning whether I deserve it.”

Off to the side, Shane gives a low whistle.

They watch together as Ryan’s shoulders slump, like he’s curling in on himself.

“I think those things are important, and you could learn from _me_,” Steven says. He wonders how long he’s been storing this up, because it’s pouring out now. “You just have to—you have to _let_ me.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Steven can’t swear that Ryan’s tearing up, but he does pass the back of his hand over his eyes suspiciously quickly.

“I’m going to, uh,” Ryan says, clearing his throat. “I’m going to—hug you. Now.”

“You know you don’t have to warn me, right?”

“No, I do,” Ryan says, a little miserably, and then he’s stepping forward to wrap his arms around Steven, tucking his chin into Steven’s chest. Steven lets his arms settle around him, trying to absorb some of that tension like a sponge so there’s a little less for Ryan to carry.

He catches Shane’s eye over the top of Ryan’s head. Shane grins at him, nice and easy, gives him a thumbs up.

And so what if Steven is the third wheel in this friendship, in this company? He decides right then and there that it’s fine to be a third wheel. It’s an honor, even, to be the thing that counterbalances, that provides extra security and strength.

After all, things with three wheels are sturdier.

*


End file.
